Justin Garrett Moore

Justin Garrett Moore is a transdisciplinary designer and urbanist. He serves as the program director for the Humanities in Place program at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, where his work focuses on advancing equity, inclusion, and social justice through place-based initiatives and programs, built environments, cultural heritage projects, and commemorative spaces and landscapes. He has extensive experience in architecture, planning, and design—from urban systems, policies, and building projects to grassroots and community-focused planning, design, preservation, public realm, and arts initiatives. He is also the co-founder of Urban Patch, a social enterprise focused on sustainable design and development projects in the United States and Rwanda.

With over fifteen years of public service with the City of New York, Moore has led several urban design and planning projects, including the Greenpoint-Williamsburg Waterfront, Hunter’s Point South, and the Brooklyn Cultural District. From 2016 to 2020, he was the executive director of the New York City Public Design Commission, where he led initiatives to address social equity, inclusion, and sustainability through built environment design and public processes. His wide-ranging work addresses housing and community development issues, place and open space design, historic preservation, public art and monuments, and civic engagement. He has lectured internationally at universities, government agencies, and civic and professional organizations on a range of design, urbanism, and policy topics.

Moore holds a Bachelor of Design degree from the University of Florida and Master of Architecture and Master of Science in Urban Design degrees from Columbia University, where he is now an Adjunct Associate Professor of Architecture. He has taught at Morgan State University, Tuskegee University, and Columbia GSAPP and as a member of Dark Matter University. His professional affiliations include the American Planning Association, the National Organization of Minority Architects, the Urban Design Forum, and BlackSpace. He serves on the boards of ioby.org and the Youth Design Center and has served on the American Institute of Certified Planners Commission and advisory boards for Columbia World Projects, the Van Alen Institute, The Museum of Modern Art, and Dumbarton Oaks. In 2021, Moore received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Architecture and was named to the United States Commission of Fine Arts by President Joseph Biden.